A Noble End
by Princess Pinky
Summary: Some stories get a happy ending, some do not. But with the help of the newly regenerated Eleventh Doctor and his new friend, Amy Pond, can Donna Noble finally get hers?
1. Chapter One

**A/N:** Second _Who_ fic. This was inspired partly by the new filming pics, partly by "The Runaway Bride," and partly by some comments made on YouTube videos featuring the new filming pics. FYI, this story contains SPOILERS! If you don't like spoilers, stop reading now and turn back. The spoilers involve casting for the season finale, "End of Time, Part One," and the fifth series premiere, but beyond that, this story is totally AU.

_**A Noble End**_

**Chapter One**

He opened his eyes to find smoke and smoldering air. As his blurry vision cleared, a face emerged from the rippling heat waves: tight, young, the color of fresh squeezed cream, and framed in vibrant flame colored locks. "Ah!" he sputtered, his lips spitting out the word before he could think on it. He wasn't sure why he was staring up into her face. He wasn't sure about the smoke. He wasn't sure about the heat. Everything in his recent memory seemed fuzzy, just lying there on the tip of his mind, yet – like a crowd all trying to fit through the same doorframe at once – none could break free.

"What!" the fiery redhead gasped, jumping back out of his line of vision.

He recoiled in response to her shock, suddenly bolting upright. From his new vantage point, he could see wreckage all around him: flaming, smoking, heaping piles of blue and black wood and metal and melted glass. "Who are you?"

"But-" the redhead seemed to stammer, then hedged backwards, away from him and the wreckage that surrounded them both.

"Where am I?" he continued. He arched his head, looking for any sign that might give him a geographical clue, but he found none.

"What?" The young woman asked again. She had paused her exit and was now staring strangely at him, curious, albeit still afraid.

Frustrated, he jumped to his feet, looking down at himself. His brown and blue pinstriped pants had a giant tear in the knee. He moved his hand to the tear and realized it seemed foreign. Nothing was making a lick of sense. "What the hell is this place?!" he shouted, suddenly fixated on the girl again. Something about the conversation – the girl in general – it smacked of déjà vu.

"Don't yell at me!" she suddenly spat, her voice diamond hard. She lifted her finger and pointed at him accusingly. "_You're_ the one who crash landed on _my property;_ _you_ should be answering to _me!_"

Then it hit him. "I've had this conversation before," he realized, raising his hand into the air. "Or at least part of it. With…with…Donna." He looked at the girl again. She even _looked_ like Donna, a little anyway. "Who are you?"

The girl scoffed. "My property," she repeated. "I'll be the one doin' the questions 'ere!" She stomped over to him, an insolent pout on her face. She seemed about ready to smack him when something caught her eye, a glint in the sunlight. Turning her head, she noticed the sonic screwdriver lying in the dirt. With a quick flex of her arm, she grabbed it and held it up into the light.

"That's not a toy!" he cried, promptly snatching it from her fingers faster than she could blink.

"_Who are you!"_ she yelled, her voice more of a demand than a question.

"I'm The Doctor," he spoke simply. His memories were all coming back to him now: The Master. The Explosion. Wilf. Donna. As the image of the latter flashed through his mind, an ache ran through his hearts. Then he remembered his escape in the TARDIS and his frantic pulling and pushing of her controls, just before the crash…

"The…the Doctor?" the flame haired girl seemed silenced, a feat that had seemed impossible just moments earlier. "_The_ Doctor?" she squeaked.

"The One and Only." A hiccup proceeded his words, emitting a strange golden-orange energy from between his lips. Then the crash suddenly made sense: the debris that he was standing in, they were that of the TARDIS. And the foreign hands – which he dared to look at again – they were of his new form, his eleventh regeneration!

The girl clasped her hands to her face, covering her nose and mouth in muted wonder. "But I thought they were only stories!" she gasped, her voice muffled from behind her hands. "All this time, just stories!"

"Stories?" The Doctor's voice seemed disembodied, both in the sense of his new body and his sense of actually paying attention to what the girl was saying.

The girl held out her shaking hand. "The Doctor," she repeated, her eyes aglow. "I can't believe you're real!"

"Why wouldn't I be?" He shook her hand. "You look awfully familiar," he blurted out before he could stop himself.

"And you look nothing like your pictures." She felt his grip loosen beneath her hand, but refused to let go. "Amy Donnalee Pond," she whispered. "Granna's told me so much about you!"

"Granna?" he repeated. His mind was spinning. Another hiccup burned in his throat and before he knew it, another burst of regenerative cellular energy was leaving his body. "Do I know her?"

"Oh yes, very well," Amy whispered, her eyes filling with tears. "Does this name ring a bell: Donna Noble?"

The strings on each of his hearts pulled taut. Yes, that name _did_ ring a bell. How could it not? Donna Noble: the most important woman in the whole of the universe! And then it occurred to him: Granna. "Donna Noble is your grandmother?" he blurted out. "What year is this?"

"Two-thousand-forty-eight."

"Twenty-forty-eight!" he shouted. "Oh, blimey! What on Earth have I done?"


	2. Chapter Two

**A/N:** I can't get out of my head how much the new filming pics of Amy make me think of a teenage Donna. What's with getting a new redhead companion so soon after the loss of Donna? (Who sure as hell better not die in "The End of Time, Part Two!") And is it just me, or does anyone else think the Eleventh Doctor looks like a teenager in an old fashion tweed jacket and bow tie professor's attire? Boy, they sure do make the oddest pairing I've seen yet. Anyway...

_**A Noble End**_

**Chapter Two**

"You don't remember, do you?"

"Why would you ask that?"

"I can see it in your eyes: the need to remember when you can't. Granna had the same one my entire life, right up until the day she died."

A crippling pain rippled through The Doctor's chest. "Donna's – Donna's…what happened to her?"

"Old age," Amy replied quietly. She motioned her hand. "C'mon, Doctor, I think you need to come with me. There's something you need to see."

He stepped towards Amy, away from the wreckage. A black hole was forming in the pit as he stared at the immortal remains of his TARDIS. She had been the only one that been with him ever since his first incarnation and now, here on Earth in the year of 2048, she was nothing but charred rubble. "I'm sorry," he wheezed, just quietly enough to keep Amy from hearing. The Doctor turned to Amy and followed her. She was leading him down a dirt pathway, lined with miniature pumpkins, some with painted on faces. "Is it-"

"Halloween," Amy confirmed. "If you couldn't guess by the police uniform," she added, her voice laced with sarcasm. She motioned her hand down the side of her costume: a fake bullet proof vest marked Police over an ultra mini black skirt, nylons, and spiked heels.

"How old are you?" he ventured as he followed her into the kitchen via the sliding glass door from the backyard. Judging by her face and stature, he hypothesized she couldn't be more than twenty, twenty-one at the latest.

"Eighteen," she replied, leading him up the stairs. "I just started at Uni last month." She stopped abruptly at the second room on the right, opened the door, and allowed him entrance. The room was painted a pale peach color, with Victorian lace white curtains and a four poster oak bed with matching, hand carved dressers. "This was-"

"Donna's room."

"My grandparents' room," Amy finished. "But after Granna died, Grandad Lee couldn't bear to change anything, let alone stay in here anymore." She stopped at a dresser and slid her hands to the curved gold handle. "So it's just been-"

"Preserved."

"Yeah," Amy agreed. "Walking in here," she sighed, "it's like a…a time portal." She pulled back the drawer and retrieved a small stack of books, which she brought over to the bed and spread out along the silk bedspread. She patted the mattress, beckoning to The Doctor, who sat down opposite her.

The Doctor cocked his neck, gazing in awe at the books. The covers were adorned with cartoonish pictures of a flaming redhead, a blue box, a brown haired man with glasses, and ghoulish creatures in various stages of attack. "What are these?" he asked, his questioning leaving his lips as his eyes washed across the words at the top of the books.

"The Adventures of Anne B. Noodle," Amy replied, as she watched The Doctor gently pull back the cover and begin to read the pages. "Children's stories."

"Not just children's stories," The Doctor replied, his eyes alight as they grazed over cartoon depictions of a redhead in a wedding dress being transported to a spaceship. _His_ spaceship: the TARDIS. "Our stories."

"She used to tell us all about them when we were young," Amy replied as she stroked the cover of one of the books fondly. "We ate them up like chocolate, my cousins and I. We couldn't get enough of Anne's adventures."

"Anne's," The Doctor echoed. He lifted his eyes to meet Amy's. "Anne B. Noodle…an anagram-"

Amy nodded, "For Donna Noble."

"What happened to her?" The Doctor asked, closing the book he was holding.

"How much do you remember?"

"I remember…a phone call. She was…" he pressed his hands to his temples. "…she was starting to remember."

"She was," Amy agreed, picking up another book. She handed it to The Doctor. "And her memories began to make her mind explode. She nearly died that date," she said, illustrating her point with the pictures in the book. "But you used this," she spoke, pointing to a glowing gate.

"The Immortality Gate."

"Yes. You used it to heal her rupturing mind. You had hoped that maybe it would work to heal her completely, but her memories kept leaking through, like putting a tiny band-aid over a gash. You were forced to wipe her mind again."

"And I saved her?"

"You placed her into a coma, which, yes, did save her for the time being." She could see the pain bleeding from The Doctor's eyes. "Problem was," she explained, turning the pages of the children's book, "during your subsequent battle with your arch nemesis-"

"The Master." He placed his fingers to the sides of his head, memories of The Master taking over all of Earth's inhabitants suddenly flooding back to him. His lips quivered. "Wilf. And-and-"

"Yes," Amy whispered. "Great-Great Grandfather Wilf and Granna's fiancé, Shaun, were killed that day. I'm not entirely sure how you stopped this…_Master_?"

"Yes."

"_The Master._ Obviously, Granna wasn't there for that, being in a coma and all. Nor was Great Gran Sylvia. But I'm 'ere, aren't I? As good as any living proof that you stopped The Master. Granna swore up and down when she wrote this edition of her books that Anne B. Noodle's grandfather had helped save Earth though."

"How did she wake up from the coma?"

A smile crept across Amy's red lips, almost the same color as her vibrant hair. "That would be in this book," she said, handing him another story. "You came with Anne B. Noodle's prince charming. Does he look familiar to you?"

The Doctor squinted, trying in vain to place the man depicted beside him at _Anne's_ bedside. "No."

"Lee McAvoy."

The Doctor's head spun. _"Lee McAvoy!"_ he rasped. He remembered how Donna had told him of her marriage to Lee in the cyber world, yet when she searched for his name, she never found it on record and assumed he had only been a cyber creation, just the same as the children they had shared in that world. "I found him?" he asked reflexively.

"Apparently so. Brought him back to Granna and," she turned the page, "like something out of a fairytale, she woke up."

"That doesn't make sense," The Doctor spoke sullenly. "If she remembered-"

"She explains it here: 'The Doctor's spaceship brought him and Alvee McOy to Anne's side for a reason, a sole purpose to stir the heroine from her Earthly slumber with a waking kiss.'"

"It's always a kiss," The Doctor chuckled. "And it really worked?"

"It really worked," Amy laughed. "When she woke up, she didn't remember a thing. Well, except that she was instantly drawn to my grandfather. It wasn't until their wedding day that she started to have flashbacks."

"That makes sense. Since her wedding was how it all started."

"Right," Amy replied, her voice cracking ever so slightly. "She remembered more and more with each passing year. And that's when she began to write the stories. She told them orally at first, to her children, Ella and Joshua-"

"Just like from the cyber world," The Doctor cut in.

"And then to us, her grandchildren. By then, they were so descript that Grandpa Lee convinced her to publish them." She opened the last book and directed The Doctor's attention to the publishing date. "She passed away only six months after the last of Anne B. Noodle's adventures were finished. We all realized at young ages that Anne and Granna were one and the same and we all though that if Anne got a happy ending, that so did Granna, but when she died, one by one we began to stop believing. Our entire lives we believed in Granna's stories, like one does Santa or the Easter Bunny, and then she just…she just left. The day she died, I stopped believing that there was a Doctor, because you," she pointed, "didn't come to save her like a doctor should."

The Doctor pressed his hands to his hearts, he could feel them beating irregularly. _"I'm sorry,"_ he whispered. He knew it didn't help. As someone who had lost his entire race, he knew those two pathetic little words never helped a lick, but he just couldn't think of anything else to say.

"Why?" Amy asked, surprising him. "As a sad, angry child who had just lost her grandmother, I didn't realize it then, but you had given me the best gifts I could ever ask for: you had fixed Granna. You saved her. And you saved my grandfather, you reunited them both with their true loves. And without that, I and my parents and my cousins, none of us ever would have existed. How can you be sorry about that?"

"Because I wasn't there to say goodbye."

Amy took his hand. "Would you like to now?"

The Doctor could feel the air around his eyes heating up, practically boiling as it humidified. "Yes."

Amy clutched The Doctor's hand, abandoning Anne B. Noodle's adventures on the bed as she led him back down the hallway and stairs from which they'd come and into a quaint living room, where two marble jars sat atop a fireplace, side by side, in front of a smiling photograph of Donna and Lee on their wedding day. "They were cremated," she explained, picking up the red marble canister that sat in front of Donna's side of the photograph. She handed it to The Doctor. "Grandpa Lee, he passed away less than two months after Granna. He couldn't bare to live without her again. And she always said that she didn't want to be buried, that she wanted to be free in the stars."

"She once told me that she wanted to travel with me forever, until the day she died," The Doctor said, clutching his fingers around the marble jar that contained the mortal remains of Donna Noble-McAvoy.

"We considered spreading her ashes in the wind," Amy replied, "but Grandpa Lee would have none of it. He said that she wanted to be in the stars and so she'd stay here with her family until someone found a way to do that. And when he died, we knew that there was only one place he wanted to be – with her – so here they both sit, waiting for a ride to the stars." She touched The Doctor's hand again.

"You're asking me to take her to the stars," The Doctor realized.

"I think it's meant to be," Amy replied, "don't you? Please, Doctor?" She pursed her lips, looking so much like Donna that the mere sight of her almost killed him. "Say goodbye to her properly."

"What about the rest of your family?" The Doctor asked. "Don't your parents and your cousins and your aunt or uncle deserve to say goodbye too?"

Amy tilted her head back. "Simone!" she called into thin air. Glancing sideways at The Doctor she explained, "That's the house, short for Simulation One."

"Yes?" a mechanical feminine voice answered.

"Please dial Uncle Joshua's number."

"Yes, ma'am."

Amy picked up her grandfather's urn as the sound of punching buttons was heard in surround sound, followed by a ringing telephone. She stroked Lee McAvoy's navy blue urn fondly, until the sound of breathing filled the room and before the person who had answered could speak she butted in, "Wilfie, is that you?"

"Amy?" a male voice answered, deep and gruff, as if the voice on the other end had just transitioned through puberty.

"It's me," Amy said, her voice quick and demanding. "Look, I need you to get everyone together, Uncle Josh, Aunt Adele, you, and your sister. Bring them over here, _now_."

"Now?" Wilfie complained. "We all just sat down for classic horror movie marathon, Ames."

"It's-it's an emergency," she lied. "You _have_ to come!"

"What kind of emergency?" Wilfie asked, suspicious. "You've a'ways had a knack for being overdramatic, Ames."

"Just hurry it on over!" Amy snapped. "Trust me on this, Wilfie."

"I'll see what I can do," Wilfie grunted, before the invisible connection disappeared with a surround sound click.

"Call disconnected," Simone relayed.

"Thank you, Simone, that'll be all."

"Miss Pond," Simone interrupted. "Your roast is almost ready."

"Thank you," Amy replied, her voice terse. "That will be _all_." She waited, but Simone seemed to have nothing more to say, so the redhead looked to The Doctor. "Mom should be home any minute," she replied, motioning for The Doctor to follow her. "So you'll do it, yeah? For Granna? Take her to the stars?"

The Doctor clutched the urn to his chest as he followed Amy into the kitchen, where she set Lee's urn on the table and proceeded to open the oven, where a roast slid out on a conveyer, perfectly cooked. A lift carried it up to the stove and slid it onto the awaiting cooling racks. All he could do was chuckle at the ease of human inventions over time. "For Donna," he said, just loud enough for Amy to hear.


	3. Chapter Three

**A/N:** This chapter is dedicated to David Tennant, for being the BEST Doctor! My Doctor. He will be heavily missed.

_**A Noble End**_

**Chapter Three**

"_Amy!"_ Wilfie hollered as he burst through the front door. "What the blimey hell is so important that you had to call us all over here for?"

Amy stepped out of the kitchen, where an apron and holding the handle of a laser knife in her hand. "Oh good," she grinned, ignoring his question. "Glad you all arrived so promptly."

The youngest child, a ruddy haired girl about twelve or so with thick bangs not unlike Donna's, was dressed as a bride, with a tiara tucked within her hair, a while veil flowing down her back, and a shimmering white gown. "Amy," she glowered, "this best not cut into my trick 'r' treatin' time. Mum promised we'd go right after Wilfie's classic _Halloween_ marathon."

"You'll like what I've got in store better than any ol' trick 'r' treatin', Sylvie." Amy stepped aside, motioning towards the kitchen.

"Is someone else here?" Joshua asked, knitting his eyebrows curiously. "Ella?" he called.

"Mum'll be here any minute."

"I thought she had to work today?" Wilfie mumbled.

"Oh, she does. Like I said, everyone needs to be here."

"Why?" Sylvie demanded, swinging a white beaded purse in a circle.

The Doctor stepped out, waving his hand and smiling sheepishly at the Noble-McAvoy family that stood before him. As he expected, they all seemed thoroughly confused. "You must be Joshua," he said, stepping up to the oldest man in the group. "Nice to meet you, sir. I'm-"

"The Doctor," Sylvie breathed, her eyes wide. "Just like in Anne B. Noodle's adventures!"

"Impossible!" Adele yelped, pointing accusingly at her niece. "Amy, what kind of rubbish is this? This isn't funny! Pulling all over here just to introduce some bloke dressed up like the man from your grandmother's books."

"He's not just _a man_," Amy hissed, her cheeks flaring with color. "He's Granna's _Spaceman!_ The Doctor. Alive. Standing right 'ere in my livin' room!"

"He don't even look like The Doctor," Adele pointed out, flinging her finger at him.

"'Cause he's gone and regenerated," Amy spat. She waved her hand up and down his torn clothes. "But look! Really _look!_ He never changes, 'member?"

"Prove it." Wilfie crossed his arms, staring speculatively at The Doctor. "Prove you're real. You seem to have my cousin pretty convinced, yeah? Well convince me."

The Doctor looked over his shoulder at Amy, who nodded eagerly. He contemplated his options: there were endless ways to prove _who_ he really was to them. But he decided to opt for the best one he could possibly think of. "How would you like to-" he stopped as the door opened to reveal a middle aged woman, just a bit older than Joshua with strawberry blonde hair. "'Ello!" he called, waving to the woman he assumed must be Amy's mother. "You must be Ella. A little late to the party, but not to worry. I was just inviting your family, you too of course, to my TARDIS. I'm The Doctor, by the way."

Ella gripped the door handle, looking as if she'd been hit with a stun gun. "Did you just say…T-T-T-TARDIS?"

"Absolutely." He frowned as Ella dropped dramatically to the ground, prompting both Joshua and Wilfie to bend down around her, fanning her and tapping her face, prompting Ella to wake up.

"Well of course she'd faint at nothing," Adele snorted. "Your sister has always been so dramatic, Joshua."

"Let me see," The Doctor instructed, pushing through the family to kneel down beside Ella. He touched the side of her face, then checked her pulse on the side of her neck. "She'll be good as new in a few spots," he said, quickly sliding his arms under the strawberry-blonde and lifting her up. "Onto the TARDIS, then?"

Amy clapped her hands. "We're all here, lest not waste another minute. You all get on now, I'll be outside in just a minute. Give Mum some fresh air." She hurried back into the kitchen, where the roast was carved on the center of the table. She placed a metal shade over it to keep the eat in and set down the laser carver beside the tray, then picked up her grandparents' urns and slid them into an oversized purple purse and scuttled back through the house, where she met up with her extended family in the backyard.

"The TARDIS!" Sylvie spoke dreamily, batting her eyelashes at The Doctor as they walked. "I've always dreamed of being able to see the TARDIS!" She practically skipped down the dirt path in the backyard until they came to the wreckage, where most of the smoke had cleared and the fire had been put out.

"Well, here we are." The Doctor said, surveying the mess of his spaceship.

"_This?"_ Adele hissed. "I knew it was a trick!"

"It's not a trick," The Doctor snapped, offended. "It crashed. I'll have to repair her."

"Repair it? Bollocks! This is _wreckage_. Nothing to see 'ere!"

"That's not true!" Amy cried, kneeling down and pushing black charred wood away, revealing the Police Call Box sign. "Look! This is it. The TARDIS of Granna's dreams. Everything's right here. Her whole entire universe."

"This could take a week," The Doctor mumbled as he surveyed the remains.

"A week?" Amy frowned. "That's too long!"

"Well I can't just pull a TARDIS out of my hat, Ms. Pond. And a week is if all goes exactly as planned. A week. Seven days. The TARDIS will be as good as new, ready to go to the stars. And considering that a full grown TARDIS takes thousands of years to grow, a week is bloody fast."

"_Grow?"_ Joshua echoed.

"Oh yes," The Doctor replied cheerily. "TARDIS coral." Me motioned towards the scattered coral chunks on the ground. "Just put about a mouse sized chunk in a little salt water and it'll start growing. But lucky for me, all the pieces are right here, so I don't have to grow a full TARDIS, I just need to mend the pieces back together of the one I've crashed. And," he winked, "I also know a way to increase the growth factor by fifty-nine."

"How?" Wilfie asked skeptically.

"Couldn't tell you even if I wanted," The Doctor replied with a wag of his finger. "An old family secret, I'm afraid."

"It's still too long," Amy interrupted. "You have to do it today."

"Today?" The Doctor laughed, staring at Amy as if she were insane. "That's impossible!"

"Well make it possible," she snapped, exuding her grandmother. "You are The Doctor, after all."

"What's so important about today?"

Wilfie huffed. "She's into all that Wiccanism-"

"_Wicca," _Amy corrected with a sneer. "'Wiccanism' isn't even a word!"

"Wicca." Wilfie rolled his eyes. "Whatever. Anyhow, she seems to think today's a special day for the dead-"

"It _is!_" Amy yelped. "All Hallows Eve."

"Ah," The Doctor coughed, realizing Amy's urgency. "The ancient Pagan holiday of honoring those who have passed on."

"Exactly," Amy replied. "If there's any day to send Granna and Grandad to the stars, today is the day."

In his arms, Ella was starting to come to. The Doctor looked down at her and smiled. "'Ello again."

Ella shook her head. "You can't be The Doctor," she replied woozily. "He's not real."

"Sure I am." He pulled the sonic screwdriver from his pocket and pointed it at pink and white cameo around Ella's neck. The sonic screwdriver began to buzz and then the cameo locket popped open, revealing a picture of Donna on one side and a picture of a very young Ella on the other. "And if your mother was here," he pointed the tip of the sonic screwdriver to the necklace, "she'd agree with me." His face contorted and he quickly slapped a hand to his mouth, covering a belch of stray cellular energy.

Amy squinted her eyes. "That stuff that keeps coming out of your mouth," she spoke, indicating the dissipating energy. "Regenerative energy, if I recall?"

"So?"

"So…couldn't you, I don't know, funnel it into the TARDIS? Make it grow faster or something?"

The Doctor cocked his head, eyeing Amy curiously. "I…" he pondered the idea as he walked Ella over to a lawn chair and set her down. "I never thought of that before. It's fairly brilliant, actually."

Amy tossed her red hair, pleased with herself. "Well, I did graduate valedictorian."

"I can't say that it would work though," The Doctor replied skeptically.

"But you could try."

He coughed another puff of regenerative energy. "I could try," he agreed. With dropped to his knees and began to scoop up the TARDIS into a pile.

"Well what are you waiting for?" Amy asked, glaring at her family. "Come now, help The Doctor. I'll go get the salt water!"

The Doctor watched her run into the house from the corner of his eye. "Using regenerative energy to pump up the generation of the TARDIS," he mumbled under his breath, his voice laced with impress. "Why didn't _I_ think of that?"


End file.
